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Saturday, January 28, 2012

MOL Band 142 Redux

This particular bit of tablet weaving was really annoying me, I've been getting thing together for KASF next weekend and realized that since I did the snartemo trim for the DH I have not managed to tablet weave anything useable. Which is just sad and pathetic. Partly I am afraid of silk, it's expensive though not hard to come by if I order it. But so expensive!! And who wants to use up pretty, pretty (and expensive) silk on something that comes out badly?

My Laurel had recently had some good success using bamboo instead of silk for some weaving, it's not quite the same but has a similar hand and drape, so when I was home in November I stopped at Village Spinning and Weaving and got some 10/2 bamboo in a nice reddish brown color. At $14 for 900+ yards, that's a pretty good savings over a similar amount of silk. I've got plenty to play around with and screw up. So last night I warped up enough to give the MOL 142 band another try. This was supposed to be a fillet, to which I will eventually sew some nice pewter beads which look like belt fittings, much like the original once had.

Well, after weaving a few inches I can safely say my problem with the first band was most definitely the stupid cotton! Getting a neat selvedge without weird little lops poking out just wasn't working before, and now it's not a problem. The whole thing is much smoother and neater and overall I am a lot happier with how it's looking. Suffice it to say, I'm going to have to get more of this stuff for playing around when I am afraid of the silk. And I'm not a lot less hesitant to warp up some double face trim, to get started on that project and make a pair of garters! Yay for progress!

I'll post some pictures of the new band once I have a bit more done. It's only going to be long enough to go around my head so I don't expect it to take too long to do.